Makarios III
Makarios III was an archbishop and a president, campaigned for union with Greece and then refused it, and was overthrown by Greece for refusing. He was elected Archbishop of Cyprus in 1950 and led the campaign for enosis - union with Greece - against British rule, alongside an armed movement he supported without commanding. Britain deported him to the Seychelles in 1956. The settlement of 1960 gave Cyprus independence rather than union, with a constitution that guaranteed the Turkish minority a vice-president with a veto, and with Britain, Greece and Turkey as guarantors entitled to intervene. He was elected president and, within three years, proposed amendments that would have removed the Turkish community's protections. Intercommunal fighting followed, Turkish Cypriots withdrew into enclaves, and a UN force arrived in 1964 and has never left. He was also a nuisance to Washington. Cyprus under him joined the non-aligned movement, bought arms from Czechoslovakia, kept a legal communist party in the governing coalition and refused to let the island become a NATO asset, which is why American officials of the period referred to him as the Castro of the Mediterranean. By the 1970s he had concluded that an independent Cyprus was the only workable outcome and had dropped enosis, which made him the enemy of the Greek military junta and of the guerrillas who still wanted it. In July 1974 the junta's Cypriot national guard overthrew him and installed a gunman in his place. Turkey invaded five days later under the guarantee clause, took the northern third of the island, and the population was exchanged in both directions. He returned in December to govern a country partitioned by the coup that had been staged to unite it, and died in office three years later.
- Lived: 1913 CE – 1977 CE
- Nationality: Cypriot
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
